The conservative candidate for the German leadership, Edmund Stoiber, has launched a bitter attack on Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Schroeder: Economic record called into question

Speaking on the final day of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party conference in Frankfurt, Mr Stoiber blamed Mr Schroeder for Germany's economic stagnation and called on German voters to take a shift to the right at the election.

Painting a stark picture of a Germany in crisis, he described Mr Schroeder as the Chancellor of broken promises.

Under Mr Schroeder, said Mr Stoiber, Germany's economy had sunk to the very bottom of Europe.

The only league table Germany came top in, he added, was for the number of bankruptcies.

Immigration controls

He warned that the economic gap between western and eastern Germany was widening, and said that the education system, too, was in a mess.

If he became Chancellor, Mr Stoiber said, he would boost the economy by cutting taxes, slashing bureaucracy and freeing up the labour market.

He referred, too, to the influx of foreign workers into Germany, calling for tighter controls on immigration.

He urged Germans to shift to the right, just as voters in France had done in their recent election.

Following the speech he was given a standing ovation from delegates in the hall which lasted for 12 minutes.